Does/did anyone else live in a family with a 'weekly' menu plan?

Cafe Society
1

By the time I reached grade school years, my mother declared she hated the task of deciding menus for the family. She didn’t object to the cooking/shopping part (my older sibs had for years pretty much already taken over the dishwashing/clean-up tasks under her supervision) but she said she just couldn’t deal with having to think up menus. I think this was in part because, looking back, we kids were damn vocal and diverse in out desired choices and quick to complain “You always do what Johnny wants!” and such.

So she gave each day a ‘theme’ and every Thursday dinner we could all suggest a meal that fit with the theme for the various days the next week, and she’d watch mostly without interfering (she’d occasionally veto some suggestions as too expensive or time consuming or otherwise impractical) as we all fought it out. Then we’d voted between the surviving choices – She wouldn’t ever vote herself, but Dad got two votes when necessary to break ties. (We did this on Thursdays because Friday was always her main shopping day.)

The ‘themes’ were nothing more than what the main ingredient of the entree would be. I still remember them to this day, more than sixty years later:
Sunday: beef
Monday: chicken
Tuesday: fish
Wednesday: pasta or beans
Thursday: eggs/breakfast items
Friday: pig products
Saturday: sandwiches

Obviously there’d be some overlap, like there’d be beef in a Wednesday spaghetti/meatballs, or tuna or ham/cheese sandwiches on a Saturday, but overall it actually worked out fine.

It gradually broke down as the children ‘aged out’ of our house and headed off to school/jobs/marriages/whatever – but little remnants still linger in our various households. For example, one of my sisters stuck to the Monday Chicken dishes religiously.

So, does anyone else have a system like this for simplifying menu choice? Doesn’t have to be organized exactly the same wat (like always Chinese food every other Tuesday) or cover every day (Like the only rule is hamburgers every Saturday.)

2

For me, it’s waffles for breakfast Sunday/Wednesday, small vegetarian pizza for dinner Friday and a bowl of Rice Chex for a midnight snack. Otherwise I let the spirit move me.

3

Heheh, nah. My mom worked as a telephone operator and her schedule varied week to week. So after I was about ten or so, she’d start informing me what I was supposed to cook either through a note or telling me directly on the nights I needed to cook for my dad and siblings. On the nights she was home, she’d let us know that she was cooking X. If I didn’t want that, I could fend for myself.

Though, your mom’s system didn’t seem as bleak as what I had envisioned when I imagined a “weekly” menu plan. I was expecting a rotation of seven dishes.

The only day we have set aside for anything is Sunday. We normally make something from scratch on Sunday and figure out what that’s going to be before she goes shopping on Friday or Saturday. The rest of the week we start negotiating how dinner will be handled sometime after lunch.

4

We plan our meals for the week, but we choose them depending on what’s on sale and what is in our freezer - plus new recipes we’ve found.

No seafood in the plan in the OP - wouldn’t work for us.

5

Our family’s plan didn’t cover the whole week, but the four days from Friday to Monday. We are a Catholic family, so Friday it was either fish or pasta (though sometimes with meat, like spaghetti bolognese, we weren’t that strict). Saturday was traditional stew or soup day (not only in our family, but for many other Germans too), so we mostly had pea, lentil or bean soup. Sunday was the special meal of the week, always meat, a beef or a pork roast, schnitzel or steak. Monday, we usually ate left overs from Sunday.

I have been living alone most of my adult life, have been vegetarian for almost 30 years and adopted none of that plan. I cook whatever I want on any day. But my sister has family with two (now grown-up) kids, and I could imagine that there are remnants of those old customs in her cooking plan.

6

We didn’t have a strict plan, but every erev Shabbat (Friday night) was a big, fancy meal-- the way some families did Sunday dinner, but also with some rituals, and always with challah. It was a meat meal, unless it was during Shavuot or on my birthday Shavuot is a festival week when dairy should be served, and we always got to pick the meal on our birthdays, and I always picked a dairy meal.

The three favorites for Shabbat were brisket, roast beef (a different cut from brisket, and cooked differently), and roast chicken. If we had guests, and my mother could find it kosher, we might have something adventurous, like pheasant, or venison. My mother could cook these things quite well in spite of doing them infrequently. We were not adventurous as a family, so we didn’t have them regularly. Price was, I’m sure, a factor as well.

Sometimes my mother brought home lamb or goat, if it were on sale, but no one was necessarily happy about it (other than my father, who liked goat).

Meat during the week might be ground beef used to stuff cabbages or vegetables-- it was mixed with rice, so it went pretty far, and if it were “choice” meat, or an inferior cut, it wouldn’t be that expensive. We also had baked chicken, which was chicken parts, not a whole chicken, and cooked in the frying pan, but slow-cooked, with the lid on, so it wasn’t fried, which is why I guess my mother called it baked.

Once a week, we usually had mac & cheese-- NOT from a box-- from scratch, and it was heavenly. It was sort of a casserole, and the main dish. Occasionally, we got other cheese, or cheese-&-egg casseroles. Usually had these twice a week.

Every meal had a salad of fresh vegetables, usually Iceberg lettuce, carrots & tomatoes (from the garden in the summer and fall), and one cooked veggie, often broccoli or sweet potatoes, sometimes asparagus.

We always had either bread or potatoes dressed with parsley, light salt, and butter or margarine.

My mother carefully wrapped and saved leftover portions. Meat might show up on sandwiches in our lunches when we were young enough that we didn’t make them ourselves.

Thursday, the day before Shabbat, we had to clear out all the leftovers. We sat down at the kitchen table as my mother pulled things out of the freezer or fridge from the week, and we claimed them. We didn’t worry about dairy & meat at the same table-- supposedly, no one had them at the same meal, but, well, the truth was the kitchen was just kosher so certain relatives would visit, not because my parents themselves cared.

I never picked a meat on Thursday, so I always had to have milk or yogurt, or if there was some bread, then I had to have PB on it (no problem).

When I was in the 5th grade, and my mother was back in school for her PhD, we started having more casseroles and pot roasts or baked chicken with veggies, because my mother would prepare them in the morning, and leave them inthe fridge. I got home from school around 3:30, and there’d be a note about what time and temp to put dinner in for. I moved the pan to the oven, and set it.

Meals were very predicatible around this time.

7

My son has suggested things like ordered in pizza on Fridays. Problem is that my wife and I like that form of pizza as an occasional treat, or even a celebration food and trying to watch our weight and while we like it, we really don’t want it as part of a regular weekly food.

We also had meatless Fridays during some Lent times of the year, which usually meant the main meal of that day was lobster.

8

I don’t think we had quite such a strict plan, but we would always have fish on Fridays (often fish and chips from the chip shop), ‘Saturday tea’ which was the only meal we ate in front of the TV and involved a cold platter of prawns, crab, pate, crusty bread, pickles and cream cakes - I think the idea was to give Mum a day off from cooking. Then a proper roast dinner on Sunday followed by cold meat and chips on Monday, using up the left over roast meat from Sunday.

These days my wife and I plan menus for Monday - Thursday so we don’t have to think about it, and save Friday for whatever we might fancy as an end of week treat.

9

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Heh. Mom was an Iowan girl who married the boy next door – I don’t think she ever cooked any form of seafood in her life. She’d eat it fine, but only at other people’s houses or at a restaurant. And since she was in charge of the kitchen as we were growing up, none of her kids were clamoring for mussels or crabs or whatever.

Actually, we were an unadventurous bunch. I don’t think we had a pizza at home until I was in high school – my brothers combined to argue for it, I guess they’d picked up a taste for it in the High School cafeteria. (Yes, really!)

As I remember, it came in a boxed kit: a sleeve of some floury mix you mixed with water and let sit for a short time before squishing it out on a baking sheet. There was also a little can of tomato sauce. I don’t think there was anything else in the box? She topped it with browned hamburger and, believe it or not, slices of yellow american cheese! And I still came to love it. I think it was called “Appian Way.” I wonder if they still make it?

10

LOL! No, it wasn’t that bad. Just about any dish can be fitted into the rotation, at least if you look at it a bit sideways. :slight_smile:

There were also exceptions, of course. Like you could pick what you wanted for your birthday, regardless of day of week. And we did the ‘traditional’ type American meals on holidays.

11

We have been doing that for the past 37 years, but without the daily theme. Half of our meals are vegetarian, partly out of necessity when we were poor college students living on a TA salary, but now because it’s healthier for us. We would plan the next week’s meals on Fridays and my wife would go shopping that Sunday. It has now shifted back two days so that she can get quadruple fuel points by shopping on Fridays. It has helped us budget when months got tight on cash and made sure everyone had a say in what we would eat. It also meant that we didn’t open the fridge door and stare into the abyss, despairing over not knowing what to make that night. We have a broad palate, cooking from three different continents each week (although it’s often the same three, just different dishes).

12

Chef Boy-Ar-Dee pizza in a box. We had that, too, growing up, thankfully instead of Jello molds. Both my wife and I make pizza maybe once a month from scratch.

13

I’m on a strict meal plan. For obvious reasons. It’s been adopted from experience over the years.

The house eats what my mid-dau cooks if she has a plan it’s not one I can figure out.

The kids have kids choice on Fridays. It’s often a small war trying to come to terms on the choice.

14

I worked with a guy whose wife prepared the same seven meals every week in rotation. The only day I remember was salmon on Friday, even though John wasn’t Catholic (although his wife may have been). I do recall that one day was spaghetti (Tuesday?), and another was meatloaf. It struck me as the most boring thing, but I didn’t ask. Now, 35 years later, I have so many questions. What did they do with leftovers? I know John didn’t bring them for lunch, because he went out for lunch every day. Did he mind having the same seven meals? Was it his idea or his wife’s? How did their kids feel about the 7-day rotation?

15

The meals during my childhood were dictated by what was on sale during the week at the grocery store. I could look at the Sunday coupon insert and predict what was for dinner that week, but not the particular order. When my parents had bowling night, it was $2 and a walk to McDonalds.

16

When I was a child, as there were 7 of us it didn’t matter what was on the table, it got et.

I seem to remember Wednesday was soup and sandwich night.

And Thursday was a quickie, maybe a casserole. That was our favorite TV night.

During football season when my brothers played or we girls cheerleadered we ate at the Stadium.

Daddy rarely braved taking us all out to eat. Sometimes he’d pick up chicken or pizza and bring it home. Sunday was always a roast of some sort.

17

My mother worked full time in an office, and still did all the cooking (and laundry, etc.) So meals were fairly predictable – casseroles prepared in advance that we kids could put in the oven when we got home from school were very big, fortunately she had a pretty wide repertoire of those; or meat, potatoes and gravy, veg and salad, where the only variety was the meat and the salad dressing; and the famous Sunday roast beef, which on Tuesday became cold roast beef, and on Thursday roast beef hash. So mostly not a scheduled menu, but a fairly predictable rotation. I didn’t care, I ate everything.

18

I have no idea if we had a schedule or not growing up… but I never have since leaving home at seventeen. I just make whatever I feel like on any given day.

19

That setup probably saved your mother a lot of stress because it removed the hardest part, choosing. A simple theme for each day keeps the routine steady and still leaves room to change the details. Many families end up doing a lighter version of this without naming it, like tacos every Tuesday or pasta midweek. It works because it cuts decisions, not variety.

20

My mother had a rule: no comments about the food.
She didn’t make a lot of rules, and she didn’t do a lot of enforcement, but that one was clear and enforced. She cooked: we STFU.

A big chunk of the cooking was done on a weekly or even longer basis: we cooked a roast on Sunday, and cold beef was part of the meal on weekdays. She’d cook a vegetarian tomato-pasta-cheese casserole, and some of that came out of the freezer again next week, and the week after, so some of her ‘planning’ was a couple of days ahead and some was a couple of weeks ahead. The ‘plan’ was to do the cooking when it was least inconvenient and most efficient, and that people ate what they got.

We did get a variety of beef-mutton-chicken-fish, and if you wanted something different there was probably some cold meat on the table. I think that was mostly for her benefit. She didn’t like and didn’t eat beef or mutton.